letter grades without assigning points

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shurwitz
Community Novice

I would like to assign letter grades to my grading scheme without having to create an arbitrary points system. So, for example, a writing assignment would get a letter grade (A-, C+, whatever) and then the four writing assignments I have over the course of the semester will total 25% of the final grade. I do not want to have to assign points detailing what each writing assignment is worth (should it be 3 points? 26 points? 142 points??), I just want to say "A-".

Why can this not be done in Canvas?

2 Solutions
shurwitz
Community Novice
Author

I guess I would use a 4 point scale (A=4.0, B=3.0, etc)

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James
Community Champion

 @shurwitz ,

There are at least two ways I could take your question and I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. I'll address both, but give more keyboard time to the first question.

Why do we have to have points?

If you're asking why you have to set up a numbering scheme, then you may want to review some of the discussion a couple of other places in the Community. They may provide some insight.

As your post said, you cannot do away with the numbers completely in Canvas. The points are necessary so that you can weight the grades appropriately. A C+ on a major paper should count more than a A- on a participation grade. Even in your response to  @abunag ​, you created an arbitrary point system and answered the question of why points are necessary (probably without realizing that's what you were doing).

To understand why you need an arbitrary point system, let's clear the air first, let's remove the word arbitrary from the picture.

All point systems are arbitrary.

However, most choose to conform to a scheme that fosters student comprehension of what their grade is. Students have a difficult enough time figuring out their grade (without something like Canvas to help) with numbers for grades. Asking a student to average A-, A, C, and B+ together would be frustrating and futile. If they are weighted differently, it's nearly impossible for them. Even when you ask someone to compute their GPA, they have to go to points to do it.

If you are using a weighted gradebook and you have an assignment group called Writing Assignments that is worth 25% of the grade and you want each of the four papers to be equally weighted, then you put in any point value you want, just make them all the same. You could make them 3, 26, or 142 points. It really is arbitrary, but it needs to be there, if for nothing other than letting Canvas know all the assignments should be weighted equally.

Some people put in values like 3, 26, or 142 so that students disassociate the letter grade with a percentage. Others use a ridiculously high point value like 1000 so that students will take it seriously. But in the end, in your example, each grade is 1/4 of 25% of the grade, no matter how many points you make it worth.

I will add that Canvas has no idea what an A, B, or C is unless you add a grading scheme. If you really want to screw with students, you could reverse it and make F >= 90, 80 <= D < 90, 70 <= C < 80, 60 <= B < 70, and A < 60. I've also heard that one of our faculty uses a grading scheme with letter grades like M, T, J, S, and V so that students stop obsessing over letter grades.

A better question than "why do I have to create an arbitrary point system?" would be "can I display the letter grade without the number?" That was part of the first discussion I linked to. But even then, for the sake of students being able to compute and understand their grade, the point system really is crucial.

Why do we have to enter points?

If your question wasn't about why numbering schemes are necessary but why you have to enter them at all instead of checking a box that says "weight all grades equally", then you might look at  " modifiedtitle="true" title="Provide faculty with a choice in how weighting is applied to assignmen...

Since Canvas remembers the previous point value when you create a new assignment (at least it does for me), there's not really much to making all the assignments be equally weighted. It's been so long since I added the first assignment that I don't remember if there was a default the first time or not. I spent most of the time responding to the other way because this doesn't really add much complexity to the assignment creation process and it's important to grade computation.

You could add a button that says "weight these equally", but that adds to the complexity of the interface. Part of the draw of Canvas is that the interface isn't cluttered with a lot of options.

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